Restoring economic growth and reducing unemployment are the main pillars of Russia’s G20 Presidency

The global financial and economic crisis of 2008-2009 and the budget situation in some of the EU countries have shown that the problems of the global economic governance are becoming one of the major challenges of the moment, Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak claims in the recently published article. Financial architecture reform, which would include innovative mechanisms of international regulation, should be the highest-level priority for the G20, as suggested by Mr. Storchak.

Since its emergence in its current format in 2008, the G20 has been preparing and discussing various measures to overcome the financial crisis. The article discusses the activities of the Financial Stability Board, which was initiated by the G20 and grew into a full-scale international organization under the Swiss law in March 2013 (with headquarters in Basel, Switzerland).

Resolving the financial crisis, restoring economic growth, and fighting unemployment these are the main pillars of Russia's G20 Presidency, Sergei Storchak explains.

A new area of macro policy discussion has emerged during the Russian G20 Presidency, namely, developing performance criteria for structural reforms carried out in each of the G20 jurisdictions. "We will come up with some reform performance criteria by the St.Petersburg Leaders' Summit, or even earlier by the July G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors' Meeting. This will mark a new phase in the G20's activities," Sergei Storchak writes.

The Russian Deputy Finance Minister also discusses the role of credit rating agencies and benchmarks used to assess the performance of the financial markets. Mr. Storchak notes that for the first time in the G20 history the discussion of the issue of combating tax evasion has been initiated during Russia's Presidency.

Additionally, during its Presidency Russia has raised a number of new issues that the G20 hadn't addressed before, and designated them as priority issues, Sergei Storchak says. To exemplify, Mr. Storchak elaborates on the issue of finding sources of financing for long-term investments.

Modernizing sovereign debt management is another important point of focus for the G20, Mr. Storchak adds. The G20 has been engaged in crisis management to some extent over the last three years, but has never really tried to come to an understanding why the developed economies, with their well-established traditions of sovereign debt management, ended up in crisis. Therefore, Russia has decided to initiate a discussion on strengthening the existing practices of public debt management.